Just Finished Reading: Sword of Bone by Anthony Rhodes (FP: 1942) [226pp] 

September 1939. Shortly after war is declared, recently called up Lieutenant Anthony Rhodes finds himself in France as part of an advance Engineering unit of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). His job is to secure local accommodation and supplies for the rest of the Battalion following behind. Their ultimate job is to secure the left flank of the French forces and to begin enhancing the weakest part of the Maginot Line. For the next 8 months of the ‘Phoney War’ Rhodes and his unit organise supplies of sand, gravel and cement and build ‘cookie cutter’ pill boxes on the French side of the Belgian frontier. Week after week and then month after month little changes. News, when it does filter through, is vague and untroubling. No one seems to know exactly what the enemy are doing. Whatever it is, they’re not doing it anywhere near Belgium. The men thought that they’d be sitting in a trench about now, protected by barbed wire but even that simple expectation failed to materialise. News of the fighting in Norway seemed to change little and still they waited. Only when the German army crossed the Belgian border did they move forward – to the cheers of the locals who saw the BEF as saviours. Days later, as the BEF withdrew to their starting positions such cheering was notably absent. Almost before they had settled in an order arrived to pull back further and then further still. The enemy, it seemed, was behind them. Another day another order to pull back, this time to a new location – the nearest available port for evacuation: Dunkirk. 

I came across this set of books – the Imperial War Museum Wartime Classics – some months ago and was immediately intrigued. So much so that I bought all 13 without first reading a single one. Well, this is my first and I was not disappointed. Spread across the war I decided to read them in historical order, starting with the loss of France and the evacuation at Dunkirk then moving onto other aspects before finishing with D-Day and beyond. It should be quite an interesting adventure. 

This novel was, as you might have guessed from the main characters name, a barely fictionalised account of the authors experiences in France during the so-called Phoney War and the first weeks of the real one. I have long wondered over why the French and the BEF lost the Battle of France so quickly – of which more later. Here was an account, written very soon after the actual events, which points out at least some of the reasons for British failure. Despite the BEF being heavily mechanised (much more so that their German equivalents) it seemed that the soldiers at the sharp end expected a repeat of WW1. They were not expecting to move very much and were certainly not expecting to move anywhere quickly! Communication tended to be very bad with few radios and many rumours. It seemed that the Army learnt what was going on from BBC broadcasts! From the (lightly fictionalised) experience of the author things seemed either laughingly naïve or hopelessly confused. Not only did the footsloggers have little idea what was going on or why they went were they went their higher ups had no idea either. They just responded to things and followed orders. Naturally the scenes on the Dunkirk beaches were viewed through the images of the 2017 Christopher Nolan movie and they seemed to match up almost seamlessly. 

Being at the very beginning of things it was interesting to see the variety of officers thrown together from very different backgrounds. There were, of course, the upper-class officer elite who tended to be either completely out of touch or really decent chaps depending on the luck of the draw. I liked the fact that the unit's doctor was a gynaecologist in civilian life – just like the army to send him to a frontline combat unit! Interesting also was the fact that one of the team was a pretty hardline Communist. I guess that in 1939-40 there were a few of them about. The author was generally very positive to the French he encountered throughout his stay and there were a number of interesting little cameos by businessmen, priests, local politicians and ordinary civilians as they began to realise that the war was here and that it was not going at all well. Although, as you might imagine, not a lot ‘happened’ in this book – certainly not very much actual combat – this was still a fascinating insight into the fighting man in France during those chaotic early months of the war. I have a number of non-fiction books on this period – both modern and contemporary accounts – and I look forward to seeing how this fictionalised account stacks up against them. Definitely recommended to anyone interested in the event. Much more to come from this series (a novel of The Battle of Britain is next in the stack) and from the early years of the war. 

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